The LA Times published this morning an article which adds to the controversy over the just released novel, American Dirt. The writer, Esmeralda Bermudez, who is originally from El Salvador, starts out arguing the novel is bad because American Dirt's author, Jeanine Cummins, is not from Central America or Mexico, and how the book supposedly suffers from that fact. However, the writer appears to realize how weak and horrible that argument is and pivots to lack of diversity in the upper echelon of the publishing industry. That is the best point, but the writer is not content with making that the initial point, though the Times' editor wisely recognized that should be the point.
Bermudez's criticisms of the substance of the novel, however, are without merit. First, she finds it ridiculous that the main character in the novel owned a bookstore and had money available for the trip from Mexico to the US and had access to money through ATMs. That happens to be realistic as we know many immigrants from Mexico have flown in rather than walked in and have access to cash from their native nations. Also, it does not seem to bother Bermudez that she herself is from El Salvador, not Mexico. She simply had a very different experience than the novel's character, who , though realistic, is admittedly not as typical as the more recent immigrants from Mexico or Central America. Worse, Bermudez reveals a comprehension deficit in another criticism of the novel when she quotes a passage about a kiss that is then described as of the neck of a person whose skin is brown. Bermudez claims the character was noting the brown skin, exclaiming that should have been obvious to the character. However, the passage shows the narrator is the one describing for the reader the color of the skin being kissed on the neck. This is pathetic for Bermudez who, throughout her article, implies her literary superiority over Cummins based essentially upon Bermudez's mere status as an El Salvadoran refugee.
The only worthwhile point Bermudez makes is our nation's publishing industry lives and dies by largely white audiences and is promoting a novel by a non-Mexican author who wrote about the Mexican migrant experience. I totally get this latter reason to be angry. But the personal attacks against the American Dirt author undercut any belief that there may be empathy in artistic or literary creations. In fact, one Latino professor of English from Rutgers-Newark was quoted as criticizing Cummins' book for having the nerve to include "social justice" within the narrative! Oh, Heavens! Social realism! A review of the novel's author Cummins' Wiki page reveals how earnest Cummins was in researching and writing her book, and how she was honestly attempting to tell a sympathetic story about struggle and desperation of Mexican immigrants.
Again, I am all for diverse voices in the publishing industry and other artistic industries. I am not, however, for racist attacks on people who write books about those who are not from their group or groups, and where the writers with empathy. To listen to the "cultural appropriation zealots" crowd, we should be banning Sinclair Lewis' Kingsblood Royal, written in 1947, a book that was a great attack on American racism. Kingsblood Royal told the story about a white guy who naively discovers he is 1/32 black, and how both whites and black town members react. It is a novel filled with complexities and layers of ambiguity. Lewis was friendly with the part white, part black, head of the NAACP, Walter White, knew of White's background, and had followed White's suggestion that Lewis write a novel about the social construct known as race. Through Walter White, Lewis met with various African-Americans, and then drew upon his experience with whites who were racist. Later editions of the book contained introductions from prominent black authors, such as Charles Johnson, praising the book for its brilliant insights and creativity in its depictions of African-Americans. Was Lewis engaged in an act of cultural appropriation? Lewis had no African-American background and yet he dared to write the book. There is also the infamous story about the novel, Famous All Over Town (1974), which was hailed as the new and great Latino novel about life in a Los Angeles barrio--until it was discovered the author, listed as "Danny Santiago," was a nom de plume for an old white, blacklisted-for-being-a-Red man, who, due to the blacklist, found himself living in an actual barrio for over a decade. The author wished to tell the story of what he observed, and even Latino writers initially praised the book as the most accurate book of life in west coast barrios. Finally, we note American Dirt has been favorably compared to John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. But, John Steinbeck grew up in fairly middle class surroundings in California (Dad was Monterey County Treasurer and Mom was a schoolteacher), had never been a dirt farmer (though he worked on a family member's farm as a youth), went to Stanford and majored in English, and had never lived in Oklahoma or Nebraska. I guess that is "cultural appropriation," too.
It is time to be even more blunt. When writing Kingsblood Royal, it is not as if Sinclair Lewis donned blackface and made insensitive and stereotypical remarks about African-Americans. It is not as if the author of Famous All Over Town was racist and wanted to reenforce negative stereotypes regarding Latinos living in barrios. It is also not a situation where Jeanine Cummins had racist motives or was not accurate in most of her descriptions. Each of these creative people wrote from a deep seated empathy with the people described in the books. They wrote from a place where art elevates and unites us. Yes, there is a structural racism issue within the publishing industry. Let's directly focus on that, and not make ridiculous and mean spirited, and yes, racist attacks against authors who have empathy about the people they are reporting on and writing about. Let's say it straight and clear: Too often, cries of "cultural appropriation" are an abuse of anti-racist language and are racist statements posing as anti-racism. We all bleed the same color, and race and ethnicity are social constructs. The key is whether we have empathy for each other. And, again, if an institution is not diverse, then it must be reformed and changed. That is where the focus should be.
UPDATE JAN. 30, 2020: Namwali Serpell, a UC English professor, originally from Zambia, has a skeptic's take on empathy, but one I ultimately reject as essentially a rephrasing of a nihilistic and existential sensibility, circa 1950s Camus and Sartre. At some point, sentimentality, which the greatest living politically oriented mind of our time, Barbara Ehrenreich, calls "joy," is what is most necessary as we move toward Bernie's proposed policies.
UPDATE FEB 11, 2020: The NY Times has a review that runs through the same nonsense line of attacks, and again fails comprehension 101 regarding a particular passage, the same exact one as the LA Times book reviewer. Again, here is the passage that so perplexes these reviewers:
Rebeca breathes deeply into Soledad’s neck, and her tears wet the soft brown curve of her sister’s skin.
The reviewer then writes:
In all my years of hugging my own sister, I don’t think I’ve ever thought, "Here I am, hugging your brown neck."Am I missing out?
What the reviewer is missing out on is reading comprehension. This is a book written for a majority white book reader audience to humanize brown skin, and the book further reminds us of the social construct of skin color being sadly significant for most of us humans of every skin color. Worse for this reviewer, Latino authors have used the same description style. Example, in Chilean woman author, Isabel Allende's classic House of the Spirits (1982), she writes at page 228 of her book, "Blanca slept with her head resting on the smooth brown stomach of her lover." Or here, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic, and still assigned reading in schools with high Latino populations, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) where Marquez writes, at page 36, "They were men and women like them, with straight hair and dark skin..." And at page 76, Marquez writes, "That woman bothered him. The tan of her skin, her smell of smoke..." Oh, those anti-Latino racists Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez! And lest anyone think, well, these books are old, here is a passage from a series of short stories from Marquez from 2006, in the book, "Strange Pilgrims," where he opens a story (at page 54 of the book) saying a woman was "beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread..."
These book reviewers who are ripping Cummins, whose grandmother was Puerto Rican, by the way, are using racist language in a cynical service of anti-racism. And anyone can rip a novelist for being too in love with a particular metaphor, as Cummins is with birds, and quote an awkward passage or two. Again, this is a cynical book review.
Oh well. I'm deep into reading my sixth novel from late novelist May Sarton, alternating with FO Matthiessen's long neglected 1941 book on art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman.
UPDATE JAN. 30, 2020: Namwali Serpell, a UC English professor, originally from Zambia, has a skeptic's take on empathy, but one I ultimately reject as essentially a rephrasing of a nihilistic and existential sensibility, circa 1950s Camus and Sartre. At some point, sentimentality, which the greatest living politically oriented mind of our time, Barbara Ehrenreich, calls "joy," is what is most necessary as we move toward Bernie's proposed policies.
UPDATE FEB 11, 2020: The NY Times has a review that runs through the same nonsense line of attacks, and again fails comprehension 101 regarding a particular passage, the same exact one as the LA Times book reviewer. Again, here is the passage that so perplexes these reviewers:
Rebeca breathes deeply into Soledad’s neck, and her tears wet the soft brown curve of her sister’s skin.
The reviewer then writes:
In all my years of hugging my own sister, I don’t think I’ve ever thought, "Here I am, hugging your brown neck."Am I missing out?
What the reviewer is missing out on is reading comprehension. This is a book written for a majority white book reader audience to humanize brown skin, and the book further reminds us of the social construct of skin color being sadly significant for most of us humans of every skin color. Worse for this reviewer, Latino authors have used the same description style. Example, in Chilean woman author, Isabel Allende's classic House of the Spirits (1982), she writes at page 228 of her book, "Blanca slept with her head resting on the smooth brown stomach of her lover." Or here, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic, and still assigned reading in schools with high Latino populations, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) where Marquez writes, at page 36, "They were men and women like them, with straight hair and dark skin..." And at page 76, Marquez writes, "That woman bothered him. The tan of her skin, her smell of smoke..." Oh, those anti-Latino racists Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez! And lest anyone think, well, these books are old, here is a passage from a series of short stories from Marquez from 2006, in the book, "Strange Pilgrims," where he opens a story (at page 54 of the book) saying a woman was "beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread..."
These book reviewers who are ripping Cummins, whose grandmother was Puerto Rican, by the way, are using racist language in a cynical service of anti-racism. And anyone can rip a novelist for being too in love with a particular metaphor, as Cummins is with birds, and quote an awkward passage or two. Again, this is a cynical book review.
Oh well. I'm deep into reading my sixth novel from late novelist May Sarton, alternating with FO Matthiessen's long neglected 1941 book on art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman.
